A daily production model for wafer fabrication

The complex process and high variation in wafer fabrication make its production management very difficult. Problems such as planned target achievement and line balancing are not unusual in the industry. Such problems reveal the importance of developing a daily production policy for wafer fabrication. Planned target achievement and line balancing are the major concerns of this investigation in developing a daily production model. This investigation divides the process of wafer fabrication into two sections, i.e., the front and the rear, according to the last sputtering operation step. In the rear section, the objective is attaining the planned output target. In the front section, the major focus is to satisfy the demand of the rear section so that the production line is balanced. Release and dispatch policies are incorporated in this study to achieve both objectives. A real-world numerical example is used as simulation data. Results show that the proposed daily production model gives a better performance in the achievement of monthly planned output but suffers a little in the performance of line balancing.